


Breathing Easy

by afinecollector (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Dementia, Distance, Emotional, Emotional Comfort, F/M, Family, Future, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Love, M/M, Old Friends, Sad, end of life, end of life care, h/c, palliative care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/afinecollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pixie asked for "<i>something painful from Greg's POV, and something to do with him or Mycroft passing away</i>." So, I did this. I'm sorry. </p><p><b>No one ever told me love could be so sweet, breathing easy.</b> - Breathe Easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing Easy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whopackedthese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whopackedthese/gifts).



“Dad, look, it’s Mike!” Amber held up the photo album, allowing the man in the bed to see clearly, and watched his face for his reaction. She watched his tired brown eyes crinkle further at the edges as he smiled. “I miss him.” she said, smiling softly, and the man nodded slowly, his hair rustling lightly against the pillow behind his head with the small movement. 

“I miss him too,” Greg admitted. "Every day since he died." His brown eyes watched his daughter’s face and he felt pride swim within his ageing body. She looked so like her mother - that tanned Italian skin, those green eyes, that dark curly hair. 

Amber smiled gently again. “I saw his brother last week when I was in Soho with Adam; he looked remarkably well, actually. He said he thinks of you often.”

“I don’t believe a word of that,” Greg exhaled and began to laugh. When he coughed, though, the huge, barking sound making his entire body quake with the force it caused and the effort it took, Amber felt guilty. 

She placed the album on her chair as she got to her feet, and reached into the bed, ensuring the cannula in her father’s nose was properly placed in his nostrils, and then placed her right hand lovingly on his slowly calming chest. “I’m sorry, Dad.” She said quietly, her brow furrowed in concern.

He shook his head carefully, and inhaled as deeply as he could through his nose, “No, Amma,” he told her in a coarse voice. “Don’t be.” He lifted his hand lethargically and placed it over hers where he could feel her warmth through his pyjama top, her eyes beginning to water as he used her childhood nickname.

Amber drew her hand from beneath her father’s and placed it on top of his. “I’ll go for a while,” she said, nodding her head, not wanting to cry in front of him. “I need to collect Melissa from school and then when Adam comes home from work, I’ll come back.”

He shook his head at her, “No - spend the evening at home. I can see you in the morning.”

Amber looked at him with a frown, “You listen here, Gregory Lestrade, I’m the boss these days. If I say I’m coming back, then that’s what I’m doing!” She said with a mocking scolding to her tone, then broke into a smile. “So I will see you again in a few hours, about six?” 

“I’d really rather you stayed at home with Mel and Adam.” Greg told her as she straightened and drew her hand back. “For me, Amma.”

Amber let a sigh through her nose sound more exaggerated than it needed to as she took her bag from where it hung by its straps over the bag of her chair. As she threw it over her left shoulder, she nodded with a roll of her eyes. “OK, but if you need anything, you get one of those nurses out there to call us.” She nodded to the door of his room. “And when I come back in the morning after taking Mel to school, I’ll help you with a wash.”

“The nurses can do that,” Greg said, blinking with obvious fatigue. He drew a slow breath through his nose, hoping to fill his lungs. 

“They can, but I’m your daughter not them.” She leant down over the bed and planted a kiss on his warm forehead. “I love you,” she said against his skin before she stood straight again. “Night, papá” 

Greg smiled at her sleepily, “Goodnight, Amma.”

Greg followed her with her eyes as she walked to the door of his small room. Such as the nursing home was large, the individual rooms for people were boxy and often impersonal. Try as Amber and her brother Rowan had tried to fill Greg’s room with photographs and more personal touches, it always felt cold and clinical compared to the home they had spent their lives in. He smiled at her again as she pulled the door open and stepped out, supporting the door with her hand as it closed to prevent it banging shut. Finally left alone, Greg closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose, sucking in as much oxygen as his weak lungs would allow before he coughed painfully. 

He turned his head to the chair where Amber had left the photograph album on the seat and smiled, pleased it had not been closed. He could see the four, neatly set out photographs on the two pages exposed and felt his eyes warm with tears. Two of the photographs were of Amber, Melissa and himself while the other two were of Greg and Mycroft, in rare moments when Mycroft had allowed his photograph to be taken. He knew that overleaf were photographs of Mycroft as he got ill, and he knew that there were even photographs nestled in that album somewhere of Mycroft on his last few days, weak and tired and with no real idea who the people who surrounded him were. Greg was glad of those photographs after his death, though. Mycroft surrounded by himself, Amber and Rowan, Sherlock, John and Mary and little Leonie - oh, Leonie Watson had warmed Mycroft’s heart, even if he failed to show it often to the people he should have. 

He smiled to himself as the tears spilt over and into the pillowcase as he remembered the one and only night he and Mycroft had cared for Leonie when Sherlock, John and Mary had attended the wedding of Molly and her beau. They’d spent the entire night sitting spread-legged on the floor entertaining the four-year-old with toys, puzzles and books only to discover she would much rather sit on Mycroft’s lap and listen to him read because he ‘sounds like Surlock’. Greg had remembered that particular night with extreme clarity and recalled it often, reminding Mycroft of it when he was ill, even when he knew Mycroft had reached the point when he no longer knew who Leonie was. He drew in another shallow breath as he turned his head and looked up at the ceiling above him. Melissa had received the same treatment from Mycroft, too, of course, but it was Leonie Watson who had stolen his heart. Melissa always clung to her Granddad Greg, though, and so that left Mycroft free to give Leonie his attentions. The girls picked their favourites, and the boys, too, had theirs. 

Greg felt the most sorry, now, for those girls. Amber understood what was happening, Rowan did too, and Sherlock and John were no longer as dependent upon them as they had been in their earlier lives. Mycroft’s illness and subsequent death had acted as the precursor to what lay ahead and Sherlock and John’s involvement in Greg’s life from then on had been sweet but minimal. But Melissa and Leonie were still young - Leonie was almost twelve, now, but five-year-old Melissa was far too young to understand that Granddad was too sick, and would not be here much longer. 

His diagnosis had come shortly after Mycroft cognitive difficulties grew. Mycroft had been settled, albeit begrudgingly on Greg’s part, into the care of a specialised Dementia unit and he was left to visit daily and, ultimately, face his own life. COPD was the first diagnosis and he lived with that for two years before cancer was brought up. In the fourth year of Mycroft’s illness, he declined rapidly and he died, three months into the fifth. By this point, Greg had put off his own treatment for so long he knew that nothing could help him now. 

“It’s metastasised.” he was told by the oncologist three weeks after Mycroft’s death. “Comfort is all we can provide now.”

Amber’s world collapsed around her ears, of course, and Rowan got more drunk than he ever had in his life when the news reached him the same day. But Greg was quiet and sober, accepting and resigned. 

“How long?” he’d asked. 

“It’s hard to say, but a year at the most.” he was told in a gentle voice and he’d accepted that. 

But it had gotten harder to breathe after three months, oxygen therapy was a constant by four months, and the nursing home became his _home_ in the sixth.

He was ready now. Tired, sad, _settled_. He knew that it was time, now. He knew that his children were happy, married and had or were expecting children. His ex-wife had remarried, twice. And Mycroft, of course… He was ready, so ready, and there would never be a good time to say goodbye - he knew that. But, oh, how sweet it would be to be back in the arms of Mycroft Holmes - to be ‘up there’ with him and know that when he looked into his eyes he knew who he was. 

He breathed in through his nose and held it a moment. His chest began to protest immediately and he spluttered it out, coughing fiercely. The agony was immeasurable. He did it again. In through his nose in a sharp, deep breath until it ached deep in his chest until his lungs expanded even when he thought that they wouldn’t, and held it there until his head dizzied and a wild cough forced him to expel it all, coughing and spluttering and heaving to breathe. 

He reached up with the calloused fingers of his right hand and pulled the clear cannula down from his nose. It pulled at his ears as he tugged it with as much strength as he could, not letting go until it worked loose and he was able to lay it on his chest. He closed his eyes and struggled to inhale another deep breath; the agony in his chest increased as barely any oxygen made it through. He exhaled as much as he could until he felt suffocated, until his throat felt closed and a pressure built up on his chest like there was a weight upon it that couldn’t be shifted. 

He refused to breathe. He refused to breathe. He refused to breathe. 

And then he inhaled desperately, gasping for air that would not, could not, make it to his lungs. The air bobbed in and out of his chest, his inhales and exhales loud and strangling as the pain in the right side of his chest felt like an explosion.

\- - - - - - - - - - - 

“Oh. Shit...Mary…” John held the newspaper out across the breakfast table and pointed with a double tap against the article he wanted her to read.

Mary pushed her glasses up her nose and peered down, reading aloud. “Lestrade; Gregory “Greg”, passed away on September 12th at Castlebridge Nursing Home. He is survived by his daughter, Amber, her husband Adam and their daughter Melissa; his son, Rowan, and his wife Elaina. At peace now, Papá - give Mike a hug from us.” Mary looked up at John, watching his brows knit together as tears began. “I’m sorry, Love.” She said and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. 

“I wonder if Sherlock knows?” John blinked, composing himself. “He’ll be devastated.” 

Mary flattened her lips, pushing them together tightly before she spoke. “We’ll pop round, we can tell him together if he doesn’t already know.” 

“Poor Amber-,” John exhaled. “And I kept meaning to go, I kept meaning to see him…” 

“He had his family,” Mary said gently, “He knew we loved him. But life goes on, life...has a way of splitting you up.” 

“It shouldn’t have - after Mycroft, we should have been there for him more.” John shook his head. 

Mary sighed softly, “We can call Rowan, ask about the funeral arrangements.” 

“I want to help them, I want to do something special. I owe Greg Lestrade so much.” John said with insistence. 

Mary nodded, “I suppose we all do.”


End file.
